2025 Chopin Academy

June 24 – June 27, 2025(Vancouver)

Mission

To provide young pianists with a solid foundation as well as stylistic awareness in interpreting the music of Chopin.

For masterclasses we have invited to this summer academy two of today’s most distinguished pianists and teachers who have devoted their lives to Chopin’s music, both from famous The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice. Prof. Wojciech Switala regularly serves as member of the jury on the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and Prof. Zbigniew Raubo, juror of many international and national competitions. For a lecture we invited Prof. John Rink of the University of Cambridge. He is also a member of the jury on the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

Features

Daily individual lessons

• Participants would have the opportunity of having private lessons with our distinguished pedagogues. .
• Lessons take the form of smaller groups of 3 students sharing a two-hour session with their designated teachers to address specific issues regarding each student’s performance as well as more general discussions regarding style and historical context.
• Every participant would have two 45-minute lessons with each teacher, a total of four private lessons over four days.
• All lessons focus exclusively on the works of Chopin.
• Our two distinguished faculty members are Wojciech Switala and Zbigniew Raubo.
• Four students will be chosen to share the stage with members of the faculty in our final gala concert.

Lectures

• specialized lectures on various aspects of the music of Chopin as well as his contemporaries.
• Lectures will be offered via Zoom in real time, with opportunities for questions and interactions with the lecturer.
• This year we will be featuring Prof. John Rink of the University of Cambridge whose scholarly research into the works of Chopin will be focusing on the understanding and interpretation of the concert works of Chopin. He is also a member of the jury on the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw.

Chopin Academy Performances

Students and the general public will have the opportunity to attend live concerts featuring our Academy piano faculty as well as carefully selected students of the Academy.

Social Event – Dancing the Polonaise and Krakowiak

It is our hope that students would come not just to learn about music, but also to forge new and lasting friendships during their time of study.
We would feature an evening of fun and socializing, with the opportunity of learning how to dance the Polonaise and Krakowiak, featuring dancers from Vancouver’s Polonez Polish Folk Dance Group.

Tuition

The cost of tuition to the Chopin Academy is $1900.

Accommodation

VCS is happy to provide help in finding low cost accommodation

Venues

Classes will be held at the VSO School of Music(downtown).

Application

To apply, please email us at info@chopinsociety.org, with your name, contact information (address, phone number and email address), teacher, the Chopin works you would like to bring to the academy, as well as a link to a 15-minute YouYube video of at least one work by Chopin, as well as one other work by Bach, Mozart, or Schumann. A non-refundable $50 registration fee should be e-mailed to the same email address.

Upon acceptance to the academy, the applicant will be notified by email, upon which the fee will be payable by e-transfer or by cheque made out to The Vancouver Chopin Society.

Wojciech Świtała is a graduate from the class of Józef Stompel at Katowice Academy of Music. In the years 1991–1996, he honed his pianistic skills with Karl-Heinz Kämmerling, Andre Dumortier and Jean-Claude Vanden Eynden. He is a prize-winner of international piano competitions in Paris (the Long-Thibaud) and Montreal. He was the best Polish participant in the 12th International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, when he received the prize for the best performance of a polonaise and a number of hors concours prizes.

He has performed as a soloist and chamber musician in most countries of Europe and in countries of both Americas. He has appeared in concert with most Polish symphony orchestras, the Silesian, Camerata and Royal string quartets and the Aukso Orchestra, as well as the violinists Szymon Krzeszowiec and Piotr Pławner and the soprano Ewa Iżykowska. He has recorded up to twenty discs for Polskie Nagrania, Bearton, DUX, Sony Music Polska and IMC, with music by Brahms, Liszt, Schumann, Debussy, Chopin, Szymanowski and Zarębski. In 2000 and 2005, his discs twice won the Grand Prix du Disque Frédéric Chopin, and in 2002 and 2009 he won a ‘Fryderyk’ award from the Polish music industry.

Since 1998, he has also pursued pedagogic work. From 2008 to 2012, he was deputy vice-chancellor for learning and didactics at the Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where he has been head of the Piano Department since 2012.

He has been a juror of the Long-Thibaud (Paris) and Paderewski (Bydgoszcz) international competitions, the Polish Chopin Competition in Warsaw and many others. In 2014, he was appointed to the Programme Committee of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute. His recordings for the Institute include Chopin’s Preludes on period instrument, which received the highest mark from BBC Classic, and the Ballades in the ‘white series’.

Zbigniew Raubo is a prize-winner of The Busoni International Piano Competition in Bolzano (1991), as well as F. Liszt’s International Piano Competition in Utrecht (1992) – so far, the only Polish winner of this prestigious competition. Zbigniew Raubo is also a laureate of The Karol Szymanowski Competition in Łodź (1987).

He graduated with honors from The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, where he mastered his skills under the guidance of Prof. Andrzej Jasiński and later became his university assistant. Currently he holds the Professor’s position at the Academy.

Zbigniew Raubo has performed with all philharmonic orchestras in Poland. He has over 30 compositions for piano and orchestra in his repertoire. Among his latest musical accomplishments are, for instance, performances within The Chopin Festival in Vancouver, “Poolse Meesters” in Belgium, but also Master Classes and a concert during Campos do Jordao Festival in Brazil.

He has recorded a number of compositions for phonographic companies in Poland and abroad, among others for: Japanese division of Deutsche Gramophon, RCA, DUX Records.

As a chamber musician he has had a chance to collaborate with: The Silesian String Quartet, The Wilanów Quartet, The Camerata Quartet, but also with the outstanding soloists, such as Bartłomiej Nizioł and Urszula Kryger. He is active pedagogically; besides his responsibilities at The Karol Szymanowski Academy of Music in Katowice, he also conducts various courses for piano students and works as a consultant for music schools. He has participated in numerous jury works at national and international competitions, including the National Fryderyk Chopin Competition in Warsaw, the Chopin Competition in Asia in Japan and the Yamaha Foundation Scholarship Competition. He was also a juror at the 11th International IJ Paderewski Competition in Bydgoszcz and the 5th International Baltic Piano Competition in Gdańsk.

Among his students, there are winners of various musical competitions, among others: The International Liszt Piano Competition in Wrocław, The Liszt Competition in Parma, The International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw, The Polish Piano Festival in Słupsk. In recent years, his student and current assistant, Tymoteusz Bies, won the first edition of the International Karol Szymanowski Competition in Katowice.

John Rink is one of the world’s foremost authorities on the music of Fryderyk Chopin. A graduate of Princeton University, King’s College London and the University of Cambridge, he also earned a Concert Recital Diploma and Premier Prix in piano at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. He won many competitions as a young pianist. As a performer, he has focussed recently on period instruments, and he is a renowned authority on playing Pleyel pianos. He is an award-winning expert on the manuscript and printed sources for Chopin’s works, the performance history of his music over the past 200 years (including Chopin’s own playing style), analysis of the repertoire, editorial practices and aspects of critical reception. Since 2009, when he became Director of the AHRC Research Centre for Musical Performance as Creative Practice, he has been Professor of Musical Performance Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is also Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at St John’s College, Cambridge and a visiting professor at Royal Holloway London, Queen Mary London and the Shanghai and Yong Siew Toh (Singapore) conservatories. He is the author of many works on Chopin, including Chopin Studies 2 (with Jim Samson, 1994), Chopin: The Piano Concertos (1997) and the award-winning Annotated Catalogue of Chopin’s First Editions (with Christophe Grabowski, 2010). He is Series Editor of The Complete Chopin – A New Critical Edition, published by Peters, and General Editor of a new series of books on musical performance (OUP, 2016). He also directs two major online projects: Chopin’s First Editions Online (www.chopinonline.ac.uk/cfeo) and Online Chopin Variorum Edition (www.chopinonline.ac.uk/ocve). Since 2003, John Rink has served on the Programme Committee of the Fryderyk Chopin Institute.